Married To The Gateman

4: The Sardauna's

"Nana, will you please call the nurse for me? The fluid will soon finish and I can't have it drawing my blood." She said with a soft and sleepy voice while she stared at the IV attached to her body. It wasn't late at night, if she looked at the clock then it would probably be around 9 at night but she wanted to go home, be out of this hospital if she could. There was nothing she hated more than the hospital and that was why she made sure she evade from it at all cost.

Nana whose head was ducked down staring at the burner they were brewing the tea from looked up, "Sure, Ya Fareeda, I'll be back right now." And without another word, she left.

Fareeda stared at his back, how he was calmly doing his work as though he were a woman working comfortably in her kitchen. She rolled her eyes at him and decided this might be the right time to talk to him about it before Nana came back because there was no way she was going to stay in this hospital by tomorrow. "Can I talk to you?" She hadn't forgotten about the slaps he gave her but she wasn't going to talk about them either. But whoever knew her knew so well that she would likely find a way of revenging on him.

He ignored her, even though her voice was the last thing Mujaheed wouldn't hear even when spoken in the loudest of places, and he wondered how that happened. Sometimes when she was fighting with one of her sisters and he was walking around the house, he heard her voice. He didn't know why as long as he was within a reasonable parameter, there was no way Fareeda will speak without him hearing and not that she was always loud. She was hardly ever loud. But there was something magical, something sultry and soothing about her voice that made it stand out.

If one will only hear her voice, no one could say she could cause as much trouble as she did in the Kamal Sardauna's mansion. "Mujaheed, I'm talking to you, as you can see there's no one left in the room." She spoke again through gritted teeth, hating the fact that she had called his name, adhered to the unspoken rule between them. He had never told her this before, that if she were to speak to him, she had to call his name lest he was going to ignore her for as much as she didn't.

He turned his eyes to her and lifted a single brow, "What is it? Do you need anything?" She tried to scoff but controlled herself. Changing his mind will be something so difficult but she will try to do that, not add more fuel to the fire.

Not looking into his eyes, Fareeda began to speak, "It's about what Alhaji said before he left, I know you just said yes to him to either annoy me or console him, right?" With so much hope brewing from her eyes as though the now sizzling pot of tea in front of him, she looked into his eyes.

He softly shook his head and went back to his pot. She had already given up a reply from him when he spoke, "None, I did because that's the right thing to do to a father like him."

'Who are you to know what's the right thing to do to someone like him and not?!' She wanted to bellow the words out but went against it. "But you know that that's never going to happen, right? I mean, just take a good look at you..." she let her words trialled off and wanted nothing but to smack the living daylight out of her lips. Why would she never control her anger for the sake of the almighty? What was she doing? Setting things right or damaging them even more?!

She cleared her voice and spoke gently now, even though upon hearing her voice, both of them knew so well that tone was forced out of her, that wasn't what she wanted to say. "I didn't mean that. But on the clearer side, Mujaheed, you know that's not right, right?"

"Tell that to your father." This man, first, she hated his arrogance, he was so full of himself that she wished killing someone wasn't haram in Islam, he would've been the second person she would kill in her life. And second, she hated how he spoke with so much confidence, and his voice always carried an air of command and masculinity she often found unnerving, which was unlike her.